Of the people. For the people. By the people.

Champions League Pressers and Team News

With the groups and fixtures announced, I thought now would be a good time to talk about pressers and team news because we are hoping you guys will start posting these ahead of your first set of matches!

Since the CL (and Europa for that matter) are a lot more selective and personal than the leagues, we are expecting more from you guys. While not required, we are hoping you will all help add to the spirit of the Champions League in the form of Pressers and Team News. Have a look at last years pressers to see what we are hoping to replicate. Newman’s pressers were among people’s favorites :D.

You can contribute in really any way that you want, ranging from a very brief team news, to an extravagant presser like Newman and ranging from something more serious to something lighter and more humorous in nature. Whatever you decide to do, we will appreciate it :D.

In order to expose the FFS community to the great atmosphere of the CL while making sure everyone can see your awesome pressers we ask you to follow the following simple process:

1. Post your presser/team news on FFS for people to enjoy!

2. Copy your presser/team news and post it on THIS ARTICLE in the comments section so that people don’t miss it and can respond to it at a later time if they want.

So, Thierry…
“Who eez zees Thierry? I am Berbilly!”
So, Mr Gilmore, the Champions League group stages are about to begin. You’ve been placed in Group H along with Lazio, Gladbach and Benfica. How do you fancy your chances of progressing to the knockout stages?
“Eet veel not be easy to do, vith the uzzer quality teams een our group, but I beelieve vee have eenough talent een our squad to see us zrough. Vee veel be looking to start vell viz a vin against Gladbach zees veek.”

Will you be looking to change anything after last week’s defeat?
“Of course, some of zee players played tvice last veek, so zees players may need to be rested. Juan Mata ees nearing a return to zee side, but zees veel not be possible before next veek. A few new acquisitions are also on zee verge of signing, but zay veel also be unavailable zees veek. One new arrival is expected een the coming veek, but zee name or transfer fee vill not be released to zee publeec.”

Reflecting back on a hugely successful first season, now that you’ve had time to take it all in, what are your thoughts on last season?
“Unfortuneetely, secoond place ees not good eenough for a club of zees stature.“
Real Betis are not that prestigious, that they should be competing for the title.
“You mean zees ees not Real Madreed? Zees ees bool sheet, I ‘ave been deceived!”

Herr Vets, manager of Hamburg SV, was tight lipped ahead of his Champions League match against the mighty Liverpool. When asked about his team selection and transfers he muttered “Ich bin on zee Vild Kart, but zeh ist unsicherheit… ermm… uncertainty in mein head. Es ist nicht easy und ich habe little geld.” When asked about his transfer targets all Herr Vets would cryptically say was ““He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”

He then talked about his opposition and their manager. “Zis Liverpool… who are they? Vot have zey ever done? Nichts!!! And zis manager, Herr Octopus… Ich would worry if zis vas Paul zee predictor octopus, except the stupid beast was choosing Spanien over Deutschland… zat bastard, but he is sadly passing avay. Oy vey, oy vey!” Vets stopped to wipe a tear from his eye. “Zis Herr Octopus is not impressing me at all. He talk good but it is not truth that matters but victory!”

When asked about his tactics for the game Herr Vets replied “We will always strike first. We will always deliver the first blow. Meine Frau taught me this truth. Now I am must be leaving.”

Before exiting Herr Vets shouted “As always at Hamburg, strength lies not in defence but in attack! Auf wiedersehen… pet!” He then winked.

Geoff: How does it feel to return back to playing in such a historic tournament with Chelsea?
ENR: Firstly, I feel very privileged and honored to be able to maintain my 100% qualification rate in this tournament. If it would have not been for my victorious campaign in the first season, I would have ended up in the other cup. What is it called? I forget. Anyways, this is the cup to be in. All the cool kids are here. I want to reclaim my crown after my reputation being tarnished as the manager of France. Toughest days of my life.

Geoff: Given that you are the defending champion, how are you coping up with the pressure of protecting your crown?
ENR: There’s no pressure, Geoff. Especially when you know what’s impending. I’m going to breeze through this tourney. Just empathize for my opponents as I’d have made spanked some sorry arses. I’ll be bringing Eva Carneiro to provide some medical assistance to my opponents….that should do the trick. (winks at Salma)

Geoff: What was the key to your success in the FFS CL?
ENR: I believe in the SLAP approach. Salma. Luck. (Home)Advantage. Points. Salma has solely been the most important motivator throughout the tourney. Before I forget, I got some great advice from the posters on FFS, especially from my best mate Rukawa.

Geoff: Ah, yes. Rukawa. I hear you have parted ways with the ladyguy?
ENR: You hear wrong, Geoff. In fact, I am proud to announce Rukawa as my assistant coach. He will be in-charge of providing entertainment to my players throughout the tourney, whilst I am being motivated by Salma. Being a chemical engineer, he has got all the qualities to be able to build the ultimate chemistry and link-up play within the team. You will see…..

Geoff: Righto, there are rumors flying around that you have had a big bust-up with the Council. Is there any truth to that?
ENR: Who spreads these rumors? It is true that my reputation has been tarnished ever since my integrity was questioned by a Council member (Parmtree) after winning the inaugural CL. But ever since he sent me a few pina coladas, I have forgiven the hypocrite. The Council is made of very honorable men and I will join the other participants in congratulating the immense development at FFS UEFA this season. (Salma taps) Yes, but that won’t stop me from handing a demolition to Udit.

Geoff: After your horrid 2nd season, do you know you might not qualify for CL next season?
ENR: Is that even a question for me? You are talking to the manager of the European Champions.

Geoff: Sorry ENR. Right Salma! You have gone through a rough ride with ENR. How is going with the both of you?
ENR: (cough)
Salma: (smiling) I love the ride, to be honest. ENR is great guy and keeps me happy despite his troubles. I get to travel the world and drink a lot of pina coladas on the beaches around the world. What more can I ask for? (wink)

Geoff: Right then ENR. Any message to the other participants of the CL?
ENR: Everyone. Use your home advantage well and simply play the odds. Pray hard. Pray that you will not get to face me, unless ofcourse you want to find yourself with Eva (winks).

During the January transfer window, Geoff Shreeves, a notable former Sky reporter has now completed his transfer to FFS UEFA after realizing his true potential could be nurtured at the studios here. He will remain infamous for touchline drama and specifically for his attempts to make Chelsea defenders cry in his interviews.

Faced with three very hefty opponents in Group H, Ginkapo started to wonder how on earth he was going to drag his band of sorry arses into Europe stardom.

Would defensive tactics, marking man for man, dirty tackles, signing Delap and Kenwyne or possibly snapping up Charlie Morgan on a free. Its fair to say that it has potential judging by the number of simple goals scored this weekend.

Or go more attacking, three at the back, full backs who learnt their trade at the Camp Nou, skip the midfield and just leave Pirlo passing his way to domination on his own, with four strikers up front scaring the opposition to death. Lets just say they will crumble like Brad Jones facing a simple Oldham cross.

Possibly the Mafia might be our best bet, I hear they do a good deal on bulk buys, and surely the assasination of Forca, Aatish and Berbilly has to cost less than Fernando Torres. And as King Kenny will tell you, any transaction that costs less than £50 Milliion is effectively free.

But in reality there is only one way to settle this; its time to make a visit to our inspirational captain who saved us from relegation with a string of 2pt captaincy’s. Only one question.

What Would Kolarov do?

As a result, I’m calling Chuck Norris as we speak. Roundhouse kicks are the order of the day, apparently if you receive enough blows to the Appendix causes players to put in a performance worthy of Walters. Thats right were relying on own goals here in Germany. And remember Angela Merkel will sort things if we dont make it through. Bear that in mind Berbilly, Aatish and Forca.

After storming out of his last press conference, Berbilly Gilmore hasn’t been seen … until now. He was recently spotted having a heated argument with Chairman Miguel Guillén over a croissant and juice.

Paparazzi surrounded Miguel Guillén as he departed the meeting. He was asked, “Did you try and deceive Berbilly into thinking you were the Chairman of Real Madrid?”

He replied with a smug look on his face, “He should’ve read the fine print! It’s in his contract that he must manage the team for the remainder of the season.”

Manager TW began his Champions League campaign the same way he did last year, mysteriously disappearing and seemingly avoiding the press. Each day after practices, TW mysteriously disappeared, unable to be found. Reporters did not catch up with him until the morning of the first kickoff when they cornered him in his hotel in Nice. He opened his door to fetch the newspaper and was caught off guard still wearing his footie pajamas

Reporter: TW, why the superman pajamas?
TW: Because I see myself as a super coach who must save the world with Barca’s beautiful football.

Reporter: What do you think your chances in group C are?
TW: We will surely win this group, if i’m honest, this year’s group doesn’t come close to last year’s. Chievo Verona, Swansea City, and Nice aren’t on the same level as the group of death. Last year I clashed against European greats Manchester City, Bayern Munich and Napoli with Villareal, a far weaker side than my Barcelona. Swansea’s Manager Evs. is a good lad but is prone to mistakes. Several weeks ago he suggested that I bring in SILVA for WALCOTT for a HIT but thankfully I didn’t ignored that.

Reporter: What are your thoughts on today’s opponent Nice and their manager Lateriser?
TW: Another good lad but i’m not too concerned about him. I mean made a Donkey the leader and captain of his team last week!!! He may have gotten lucky and succeeded last week but I don’t think he’ll be so fortunate when he comes against my squad. Since we’ve got a world class Argentinian striker, Lateriser will struggle to keep up with us in the goal department given that he has that hopeless Frenchmen in comparison.

Reporter: Will you make any changes this week?
TW: yes in fact, we’ve been quite busy in the transfer market. We are looking to bring in a striker from Manchester City and one from Liverpool. we may also reshuffle our backline a bit as last week we conceded far too many goals. We are considering giving Bertrand a couple week trial period in the squad but have not made up our minds yet.

Reporter: any plans yet for next week?
TW: i’ll need to try harder to avoid you and the rest of your bothersome lot. Maybe signing Pepe to keep you away will do the trick. you fools have already taken far too much of my time. be gone!

An interesting bit of news emerging from the shores of France. We are hearing that after Nice manager Mr.Holmes handed Barcelona manager TW a real drubbing, the owners of Nice were so delighted with manager Sherlock Holmes that that made him an offer he could not refuse. Some sort of contract extension has been agreed upon with Nice looking to have Sherlock as their manager for the 2013-2014 season as well. Rumours suggest that deal involves the managers promising Jennifer Lawrence as the new club physio. Another rumour coming out from the shores of France is that their high profile January signing, Olivier Giroud will now be made club captain.

The door opens and in strides Berbilly. He takes his seat behind the press desk.

“Before I take any questions, *sniffles* I vood like to offer my apologeez for my absence last veek. I ‘ave ‘ad a cold zis past veek, so I vas unable to attend. *sniffles* I vill take any questions now.”

You bounced back from you defeat to Ginkapo with a victory against Forca, how crucial is that for your Champions League campaign?

“It vas ‘uge for us. *sniffles* Now all of zee teams are tied on zree points, and vee are in vith a real zhot of vinning zee group. *sniffles* The ‘ome fans vere incredible, and vithout zere support ve voodn’t ‘ave been able to vin.

Your next 2 matches are against Aatish. How do you see your team faring against his side?

“Aatish, who?” *sniffles*

Aatish, your opponent for this week and next.

“A tissue?” *sniffles*

I just told you!

“Sacrebleu – vill zomevone give me a tissue? Are you all a bunch of incompetent fools?!”

Whilst there is no sign of a presser from Stamford Bridge, our reporter on the touchline, Geoff Shreeves, has the latest news. Apparenly, Chelsea manager ENR has gone on an emergency to his hometown in Mexico, along with sidekick Salma Hayek. Instead, assistant coach, Rukawa, will now take in-charge of this week’s match. The team that Rukawa has put out looks very attacking and in a moment you’ll see why.

Rukawa has gone with a twisted 3-4-3 formation. In goal, last week’s hero Bunn earns a spot over consistent Simon Mignolet. Believe it or not, the whole defence simply rests on the shoulders of goal-machine Jamie Carragher. However, Jamie is ably protected by captain Steven Gerrard and the monstrous hair of Maraounne Fellaini in the heart of central midfield. Pablo Zabaleta plays in an advanced RB position, whilst Ben Davies sits deep on the left to enable Fellaini to make his forward surges.

The in-form Gareth Bale and Juan Mata are being played on either side of the central midfielders. It looks to be a case where Bale will receive the ball deep and look for a quick one-two with Fellaini. Bale’s runs will be crucial to Chelsea’s counter-attacks in this game. Having improved his finishing this season, it looks like Mata is set to receive a lot of long balls from Gerrard in an advanced position. His interplay with Daniel Sturridge will be vital to Chelsea’s hopes of any goals.

The man on fire, Wayne Rooney, is set to sit deeper than normal and establish a link up play between the midfielders and the two forwards. He’s unusually isolated in the middle but it is expected that Mata and Bale will drift into the centre, as per usual.

The two men up-front are Aguero and the newly transferred Daniel Sturridge. It looks like Sturridge has shrugged off his niggle and will look to extend his goal-scoring form.

Overall, it looks a very very very attacking team on paper. There’s a lot of pace on the left hand side through Bale and Aguero and creativity on the right through Mata. They will look to Rooney and Fellaini to dictate the game in midfield. Big questions in defence as Carragher’s the only central defender. This team is set up to score goals from the off, however looks to concede quite a few as well.

My prediction: Chelsea players running around like headless chickens and Rukawa’s debut in a managerial role ending up in a big loss.

Going into the qualification group two weeks ago it was being billed in some quarters as the archetypal “Group of Death” with all four teams highly ranked in overall FPL standings. The first two weeks has done little to dispel this with each team picking up a win and a loss, sitting on 3 points a piece going into GW26 (the Liverpool / Swansea DGW!). Who will seize the advantage this week?

Stade Rennes (Sarnab) vs Hamburg SV (Herr Vetts)

Sarnab is the relative newcomer in the Group, with just two previous seasons in FPL (108k and 27k last season), however he has kicked on this season and went into the Group stage in a strong position. Sarnab peaked in GW21 at 525 but has slipped slightly to 2,293 going into this week.

Looking at this week’s fixture the two line ups are very similar, the only differentials being:

With Sarnab’s home advantage coupled with Vets’ 4 point transfer hit, this is going to need something special from Bale to give Herr Vets a win.

Verdict: Home win

FPL veteran Herr Vets seemed to “click last” year, finishing 6787 overall after several solid but unspectacular seasons in the game. Vets had an “up and down” start to this campaign but is very much the form team in the Group right now, having risen phoenix-like from 51k to a current rank of 4k in just 7 weeks.

Atalanta (MJ6987) vs Liverpool (Optimus)

I have had three previous seasons in FPL, finishing a respectable 15k in my first campaign and then 434 followed by 9,076 last year. After a good start to the season I have been treading water since GW9 hovering largely around the 2-3k mark since then, currently sitting at 2,714.

Optimus, like myself, has three seasons under his belt, finishing 61k in his debut season followed by 13k and 1,536 last time out. Optimus had a reasonable start to 2012/13 but has been motoring since GW7, peaking at 957 last week before falling back marginally to 1,257 making him the highest ranked team in the Group right now.

This fixture is looking much more open with quite a few key differences in the two line-ups. For example, I have Suarez captain who doesn’t feature in Optimus’ side whereas, although I have Sturridge, Optimus has brought him in and captained him. So, where is this one going to be won and lost…

Note: All names mentioned in this conference are fictitious. Any resemblance to any character is purely co-incidental.

Things were top notch on the sunny shores of France. As usual, bald men and bikini clad women (https://uefacouncil.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/team-allocation/comment-page-3/#comment-1118) showed up for OGC Nice’s presser, this one on a beach. Despite poor performances in the knockouts, the clubs ‘deductive’ football philosophy championed by Europe’s favorite high-functioning sociopath Mr. Sherlock Holmes now sees it being one of the most popular in Europe. There were a few high profile announcements the club was going to make, for which massive crowds had gathered.

The club had seen a meteoric rise. Reporters from all over the globe were here to cover this event. There were a lot of well renowned faces in the crowd. Pultizer winning Sporting Abeergut and the famous South African Dr. Christina initiative (holding the Guinness record for curing the most patients suffering split-personality disorder) were seen sipping on a Pina Colada from the same glass with two straws. Christina was later spotted organizing a darts competition, with Forca Inter’s face on the dartboard. Canadian reporter Acquafresca was seen sitting on a gigantic gold couch (that he got himself) which had the words ‘elite’ embossed at the back. In bold. Renowned chef, Abhishek was spotted pissed drunk, dancing to the tunes of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFZj6Fnq4G4. Famous English poet, Dr.Doosra was seen reciting his latest creation ‘Vision- owning only one Liverpool player for the DGW’ to Mark, Jonty and Granville. Light Knight and NZ pro Jafalad were seen having an intense debate on the topic ‘how to defend’.

“The game, Mrs.Hudson is ON!!!!!!” blasted the gigantic speakers on either side of the beach.
A humongous wave was seen from far and on top of it was him! Nice’s favorite sociopath had arrived. Dressed in black trunks wearing a black coat and heavy bling, Sherlock was riding a massive wave on his surf board with a mike in his hand.

“Boys and girls, and ladyguy, it’s been a long while,
Our club was in a mess, I was organizing its file,
I won’t take too much time; I’ve got a club to run,
Just hang back, drink some more, enjoy the sun.
Dr.Doos, I hope you serve these good people some of your finest wine,
Glad you guys could make it here, the pleasure is mine.
So firstly, talking about our new French captain, a certain Donkey,
Who loves a Donkey? Who loves a Donkey? Me, bitch, me!
He’s 6 ft 2, he’ll do you, when he scores past you, you’ll go to the loo, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqSJMnrHPLw)
He’s Ollie Ollie Ollie Girouuuuuud,
There’s a silver lining too, we’ve got a new physio whose smokin’ hot,
Yea bitch, Jennifer Lawrence, that’s who we’ve got!”

INTERRUPTION

A certain streaker is seen running across the shore shouting – NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Sturiddddddddgeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Reports later suggested it was Daily-meltdown-Daniel.

Sherlock, ignoring, and continuing –

“Due to certain reasons, Watson is not a part of this club no more,
An assistant I needed, someone capable of this shore,
He is a master, second only to me,
A visionary, a genius, the president to be,
Him along with me are going to take this club so faaaa,
OMG! YES! It’s the one, the only! BEMBA DAAAAAA!
We’ve signed a contract as well; we’re here next year,
So ladies and gentlemen, do not fear!
That’s it for the day. Drink away; I think I’ll stop.
Well, cause you know, Jenny’s calling and she’s gonna be on top.”

UNPLANNED PRESS CONFERENCE
I regret to announce I, the Jolminator, was ambushed for an unplanned press conference. It was all recorded and has been posted online. I am not sure it shows my best side, but it is too late.